At the Prophet’s Bar

Apr 302024
 

One night only. Roy Orbison. Written in swooping red neon script on the tired marquee in front of the last roadhouse, where now stands an Outlet Mall on Highway 94 between Chicago and Milwaukee.

It was a Wednesday night. Bitter wild December wind cold. Long, long ago. Back when I did things like stopping to listen without a second thought.

Easing down on the exit ramp and coasting by “The Brat Stop,” a jarring restaurant lounge screaming TOURIST! And instead parking in front of “Bobby Nelson’s,” the quiet red brick cheese and sausage heaven that would provide tonight’s dinner. Buying way too much. Because a pound of this and a pound of that, wrapped tight in butcher paper and torn open as soon as I got back in the car does add up.

Circling back under Highway 94, to the almost empty lot in front of the Roadhouse. The neon flashing like a heart beat. Roy Orbison.

Inside to the welcoming warm darkness, an almost empty room, except for there she was, at the end of the bar, by herself. Eating a chocolate chip cookie. She looked up, smiled, and time stopped.

“What are . . .” I started.

“Of all the gin joints in all the world,” she laughed and winter suddenly was a memory. This was a woman who wasn’t afraid to tuck herself alone in to the corner of a dark bar on a Wednesday night. If there was a good reason to be there.

“I’m flying home out of Milwaukee. Late flight” she said. And you didn’t think I’d spend any more time in Beloit!”

“Hey, there are worse fates. So how do you know this place? Or did you just see the sign?”

“Oh this is the Prophet’s Bar.”

“The what?”

“You gotta get your nose out of the books and pay attention young man! The Prophet! I heard about him back at school from a guy who comes from Kenosha. They call this guy ‘The Prophet.’ Nice old guy. Doesn’t hurt anybody. See him sitting by himself over there with the Old Style draft?” She pointed at an older man I hadn’t noticed having only been drawn to the light of her smile.

“Yeah, he’ll just come over, say something, nod his head politely and leave. He gives these little speeches. He’ll do it before the music starts. Won’t interrupt anything. People around here, the bartender was just telling me, they all expect it. Nod their heads. Say ‘Thank you Timothy’ and he goes on to someone else or back to his beer.

‘Timothy?’

“Yeah, I’m sure he’ll come see us.”

It was an hour to the show. And we spent most of it in that warm corner finishing each other’s sentences.

Sometimes, and if you’re one of the fortunate ones you’ll have this happen to you, you simply connect with another human being. A world without them isn’t a thought you could ever have. Instead there is a history. That slow, steady drum beat waltz leading up to that connection. Then there is right now. A right now so overwhelmingly good that it makes your soul breathe. And finally there is a future. The natural as a summer rain future of the two of you together in some small corner of a green Jersey forest, or a warm wind Carolina mountaintop, or some secluded sun drenched beach along the Gulf Coast. Anywhere. Because there will be a future. Full of work that you will both do in the rhythm of some larger song you can both almost hear.

As the time for Roy Orbison to play came close, I looked down and discovered we were holding hands and I could not remember when we started. We had always held hands. Always would.

As Timothy the Prophet approached, she saw him first.

He cleared his throat. Looked at us both. Blue eyes of kindness and he spoke.

“Don’t be naive. There are difficult times ahead. As the end approaches, people are going to be self-absorbed, money-hungry, self-promoting, stuck-up, profane, contemptuous of parents, crude, coarse, dog-eat-dog, unbending, slanderers, impulsively wild, savage, cynical, treacherous, ruthless, bloated windbags, addicted to lust, and allergic to God. They’ll make a show of religion, but behind the scenes they’re animals. Stay clear of these people.”

When he finished we were all three quiet for a moment. His words settling in to some silent corner of our connected hearts. Devastating words of warning as a prelude to a love song.

Roy Orbison came on alone. Just him. No strings, back up singers or any of that.

Just that voice. Just Roy Orbinson’s voice

He sang “In Dreams.” And we held hands. Like a world without end . . . . .

And tonight. As I shut down the circuit breakers in my janitor’s closet in the outlet mall, reminded myself to stop on my way home to pick up a six pack, wondered what I’d be watching on television tonight; I remembered Timothy’s warning for the first time in years.

I held on tight to the sound of Roy Orbison’s voice.

And I wondered where she’d gone.

Young Carole King

Apr 122024
 

She’s somewhere in her twenties. Traipsing downtown from Brooklyn to the Brill Building in Manhattan where she plunks out tunes on a battered old piano, some kid calling himself Neil Diamond in the room next door, little Carol Joan Klein from the neighborhood thinking she can be some sort of songwriter or something. What’s with the Carole King name? She is little Carol Klein. She’s working as a secretary. Husband Gerry is in pharmacy school. Here is this Carole King person writing a melody, leaving the music on the piano at home with a note to Gerry scrawled “See if you can come up with some lyrics for this one.” Gerry listens, then sits down to write:

“Tonight you’re mine completely

 You give your love so sweetly.

 Tonight, the light, of love is in your eyes.

 But will you love me tomorrow?”

 Then the song actually gets sold to the Shirelles. There is actual money from the song writing now. There is a limousine ride when news of that sale comes through. The young couple hops inside that car and never looks back. She is Carole King now.

But she’s not eighty two. Because I’m still 21, right?  I’ve just come down from Wisconsin to live in Chicago. There were five of us renting the 2ndand 3rdfloor of the old building at Racine and Webster. I had a job. I was a teacher. Special Ed kids. They would make you crazy if you weren’t careful. Which is why it was good that we had rights to the roof of that building. Because sometimes in the summer, she and I would grab the sleeping bag and climb up through the glowing summer prayer of star lit city night. She and I, we’d go up on the roof. Dancing in the summer wind beneath the stars. Owning the world. Everything being possible.

We’d go “up on the roof.”

Like Carole King.

Resurrection Chicken Soup

Mar 122024
 

11715340
Does the golden promise smell of chicken soup wafting up from the street to your third floor landing still linger through the years?

Can that hand delivered memory smell still come streaming back now that your old place on Second Avenue in Manhattan has been blown to kingdom come? Can the smell of chicken soup come back?

I read about that gas explosion last month and saw it was your old address. Made the national news. These days I work for a gas company. So I pay attention. I could tell you the details of exactly what happens when somebody tries to siphon off stolen gas. Let’s just say that chances are, it will not end well. This horror scene on Second Avenue, leveled what, three buildings? Pounded them into dust.

One of those buildings was where you lived. That place where we would write three-word great literature in the frost on the windowpanes. Where three stories up, the radiators would clank and sizzle through the winter and the traffic would rumble and roar outside while a puffy red comforter would wrap us up in all the warmth the world had ever known as we lay still and so alive, after love.

So all these years later, I read the news story of the gas explosion on the 21st floor of an office building in Chicago and once again I could smell the chicken soup. Across all the decades. The mist of broth and time from the Second Avenue Deli. Like some unseen hand, tugging at my sleeve and steering me to stand once more before Max’s holy silver alter steam table. Max, bushy gray moustache and white apron, points at the chicken soup tureen, shrugs his shoulders, says “Oy. For the girl again? Again for the girl?” I nod and look down.

I would take the soup and crackers in the brown paper bag, trudge on up to the third floor landing. Then on a dusty table under a perpetually burned out light bulb, I would leave my little offering.

Which I am sure drove you bat shit crazy. At least for awhile. What a pest I was!

I was trouble. I was not a future. I even had another girlfriend. So why in the name anything that matters should you spend even a second more with me? I was in marketing. What did that even mean! You worked for the same publisher. This is back when there was more than one publisher. Way before amazon dot come changed everything. In the East Village neighborhood joints after work, when people would ask you what you did, you’d say things like, “I scrub editorial toilets.” No one knew what that meant either but it was a much better answer than “I’m in marketing.”

What split us up? I guess there was little stuff. Most of it I don’t remember. We ran with the same crowd. Would be writers. Editors. Aspiring famous people. All of us in and out of each other’s lives. Often so much so that when someone hurt someone else, the story rippled out like a stone tossed in the pond leaving only circles on the water and a stone gone for keeps without even time to say “I’m sorry.” Or maybe “can we try this one more time?”

And that’s what prompted me to start in with the soup.

I had a place around the corner, like the guy in that song you didn’t like but I loved, would sing, “really no place at all, just a hole in the wall.” It was our first spring apart. Just before Easter, which overlapped with Passover that year. So the soup thing was kind of a interreligious meaningless gesture. Resurrection Chicken Soup.

You had come down with a horrible case of mononucleosis. Everybody was talking about how you literally couldn’t move. And there was nothing I could do about it.

Drove me fucking crazy. You got sick. I got crazy.

I knew you’d be fine. I knew the stories you sent spinning out our Second Avenue pond would be extra sharp. Extra funny. But there was nothing I could do to ease your troubles.

So I started leaving the soup. No words. Just the soup.

As you got better, you eventually lost the job scrubbing editorial toilets, but every time I heard news of you, I’d leave the soup. Every time something big would happen in your life, I’d bring the soup. I told Max I was sure I’d be bringing soup to your wedding.

You never mentioned it to anyone, I’m sure. Love is not the opposite of hate. Love is the opposite of indifference. I assumed your indifference. Probably a good thing that we never made it too many steps outside that that puffy red comforter, keeping us warm in the New York City winters. All that indifference can get old.

Of course you finally left the big city and so did I. One of us off to warmer winds and the other off to even colder winter winds. The night before you were set to leave town, I left my last brown paper bag on your third floor landing.

And down through the years I’d hear bits and snatches of stories of your adventures in the world of what happens when none of us are young anymore. So I’d dream up another serving of that soup for you. A ladle full of hope that your spirit was still shining.

Right on up to that big explosion, a couple weeks ago, that leveled your old place on Second Avenue. The explosion that brought back the smell of that chicken soup.

That soup I once again placed, like a story,or a birthday present, right outside your door.

Plenty of Time

Apr 042022
 

It was back when we all had plenty of time.

A late night call. I was up. Scribbling something unmemorable in a spiral notebook under the circular pool of light cast by a metal gooseneck lamp.

The caller ID said Los Angeles. I remembered the number. Even after two years of never seeing it at all. So I picked up the phone. And then as if the conversation had never stopped, you said, “So come to Denver tomorrow.”

“Peachface?”

Your laugh. Like a bubbling fountain lit with the colors of a soul born wise. “So I’m still just fruit to you, huh?”

“Fruit, famous bimbo, circus clown . . . “ I heard background noise, a piano, cranked up a notch. Somebody was singing something. There was a crowd. “Where are you, Melon?”

“I’m at Warren Zevon’s house.”

“What’s he like?”

“Intense.”

“I’ll bet. So, I gotta tell you. This is a surprise. How’s work going?”

“I got another TV series.”

“That’s wonderful! Congratulations!” She filled me in on the production deal. The premise. The characters.

“That is really great.”

And then she said it again. “Come to Denver.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Listen Lemon-Lime, I can’t just go flying off to Denver! I gotta work. Tomorrow there’s a meeting on the IPO and I ..”

“Oh yeah. I forgot. You’re like Mr. Software Executive, can I get you some coffee sir, oh of course I’ll sit down and sir, why are you touching me there . . . . .”

“Yeah that’s a normal day.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s okay. We’re going public soon and I’m cashing out. So there will be a little bit of money if a rainy day ever comes. A rainy month, not so much. But a few good days.”

“Okay, then you really gotta come to Denver.”

“ Kiwi, it’s been two years since that one weekend in Chicago. And you really want me to come to Denver. Why Denver?’

“Cause there’s this cabin. We travel north. Way north. Belongs to a friend of a friend. I’m gonna start work on the new series soon. So I thought. . . .okay, I know I didn’t return a call or two, but then I remembered how weirdly normal you are. . . .and if we went out cross country skiing and met a bear? I’d need somebody there who could out-talk the bear.”

Denver was a regular stop in my travels for work. I knew the flights. While we talked, I reached for a book people used to have that listed airline flights.

“So you really want me to come to Denver? Then off to someplace ah. . .north? You’d risk a whole, TV and movie star seen with a nobody thing?”

“Roger, are you gonna go all ‘star is born’ on my ass? Walk into Lake Michigan and take the big drink” Force me into playing Barbara Streisand? You know I don’t want to be Barbara Streisand.”

“I know. You want to be Lucy. I remember. So you’re sure you want me to come?”

“Why are you asking me that question? You’re still a guy, right? That same batshit crazy cocktail of macho and sensitive I remember? That time in the Four Seasons in Chicago? You remember I was the loud one? And how much more fun showers were when you had company? You are still a guy, right?”

I answered, “6:00 arrival. Denver International. United Flight 545. Tomorrow night.”

And I hung up the phone.

This was back when we all had plenty of time. Everything seemed so easy. And no one knew it wouldn’t always be that way.

Barreling down the runway the next afternoon, strapped in wheels up. A straight shot through the sky to Denver amazed at how easy it was to just go. The one thing I always did was make sure to have people who could be in charge around me at work. So now they were. Back then there was no Black Berry, on or off the grid, 24×7.

So the world faded as the plane climbed, and the songs in my head started up.

The Isely Brothers. “If you leave me a hundred times. A hundred times I’ll take you back.”

Then, landing in the snowstorm, so the music stopped for a moment. She was in the corner of the gate by herself. Not looking like a movie star; just looking bright-eyed happy. One open palm wave. Then a slow motion walk, holding back a magnetic pull. She sticks out her hand as if to shake and then busts loose; jumping up to wrap her legs around my waist and the only word I remember after that was “Hi.”

The car was in her name. I remember the look on the rental car guys face when he handed me the keys. A look that said, “Damn I wish I was you.”

Then out to the starry Rocky Mountain night. “As soon as you got here it stopped snowing,” she said. She put the mix tape she had made into the slot as we began the winding road north up thru the pine trees, and Bob Dylan sang as we talked. We missed not a beat of the silent two years. Everything was easy when we talked. Dylan sang

“If where the snowflakes storm, when the rivers freeze and summer ends” …and the pines sang a private melody all our own.

Her Dad had been a DJ, and she had been making mix tapes since she was five years old. Driving up further into the mountains, it was as if her music let us own the road. Lowell George sang

“All, all that you dream, comes through shining, silver lining”

As we glided up into that starlit night, the song flowed into Frank Sinatra singing

“You are the promised kiss of springtime, that makes the lonely winter seem long.”

Then Bonnie Raitt…

“You made me leave my happy home, you took my love and now you’re gone”

And just for one instant, looking at a giant boulder that had tumbled down the side of the mountain and feeling the rush of the Big Thompson stream cascading in the darkness to the side of the highway, just for one second, I could see a time when it wouldn’t always be this easy. But that faded fast, as Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds bopped along, asking
“Heart, why are you pounding like a hammer? 
Heart, why are you beating like a drum?

We talked some more about the premise of her show. How much she was going to able to be herself. A lot more than last time. But not as much as the next time. Back when we all had plenty of time, the conversation always stopped at any talk of future.

On into the mountains and the northern night. The talk and the music so easy, the rhythm we had together was so warm, that she fell asleep, leaving me with directions to the cabin. We pulled in at the dawn, having been up all night. A private little jewel of luxury nestled in a circle of pine trees. Not a neighbor in site. Five miles from the nearest town. A view past the circle of pines out across the tops of the mountains, the golden light of coming day rising with the sun.

“Wake up little TV girl,” I leaned over and kissed her forehead. “We’re here.”

As her eyes opened to the first light of the sun, the knowing wisdom in the old Kris Kristofferson song ended her mix,

“I have seen the morning
Burning golden on the mountains in the skies.
Aching’ with the feelin’
Of the freedom of an eagle when she flies.
I don’t know the answer to the easy way
She opened every door in my mind.
But dreamin’ was as easy as believin’
It was never gonna end.
And lovin her was easier than anything I’ll ever do again.”

Back when we all had plenty of time.

—————–

 

 

 

Derek and the Virus

Mar 122020
 

Derek lost his room around the time the virus started seeping into Chicago. Now Derek stays on the street full time. Two squares of concrete in front of the crystal shop on Michigan Avenue. A street that used to be called “the magnificent mile.”

Derek doesn’t call it anything since the stroke robbed him of speech. Now he just exclaims with bursts of sound. A thumbs up roar of delight when you greet him. When he knows he’s been seen.  The woman who owns the crystal shop walks to his concrete square and has a 20 questions dialogue asking what happened to his room? Does he have a place to sleep? He answers with one sound for “yes” and a shorter, clipped sound for “no.” She asks if a shelter would work. Panic spreads across his face. The fear of what happens in those shelters barking out in a very clear “No!” And as the late afternoon crowds thin, the trains half full of people holding in coughs and stifling sneezes, the lady in the Crystal store makes phone calls trying to find a roof for Derek.

While I am walking past the building where someone tested positive. It’s next to the building where I work. I’m thinking about people who –from the very real, stomach gnawing need for money—keep working. People who have to make the horrific choice of working or staying safe.

My Dad comes to mind. I catch a glimpse of a profile cast by someone on the street. A walk. A laugh. A look in the eyes. Just like him. Gone these past few years, he comes back to look after all of us. When things get really hard, he comes back. Now it’s night. Derek is out there. The rain comes. My Dad is here.

He comes back for all of us.

My Corona

Mar 012020
 

When I hear “don’t be scared of the Corona virus,” it calls to mind my sister Wendy and I, sitting in the dark when we were around eight and ten, watching the movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. We were terrified. And now years later, I have no idea why. Or even what the movie was about. I Just remember we were scared. But if somebody, back then, were to say, “Don’t be scared” that would not have helped. It would not have helped then. Doesn’t help me now. 

Yesterday morning Maria and I are in the library checking books out that she needs for her teaching job. The woman behind the counter is wearing surgical gloves as she coughs into her hand and blows her nose and hands us each book one by one. All while wearing the gloves. Should I be scared? Or even think about the very nice, well intentioned lady who didn’t get the purpose of the gloves? Telling me “don’t be scared” doesn’t help. So, what does help? What’s have I learned so far? What’s the story here? First is the message that we are all in this together. The virus is on every continent but Antarctica. It isn’t stopped by a wall or a travel ban. Second, Facts matter. Even when we factually don’t know much at all. So far, 3 people have been identified as infected in greater Chicago. 2 of the 3 have recovered. Third, credible leadership matters. It’s nice that we only have 3 people identified in Chicago. But put that in context. We also haven’t tested more than a tiny fraction of the population. Unlike South Korea and their drive to test what looks like everyone. Credible leadership means—like my friend Andy Schulkind wrote—not getting stuck in fear. It means planning. It means paying attention to experts. Trusting the scientists. What’s the vision, the unifying picture of hope that all of us citizen leaders can use to take us though all the unknown’s ahead? Perhaps it’s the “Stockdale Paradox.” The ability to hold two seemingly contradictory beliefs at once. What are those two beliefs? First, that we all have a common problem here. And second, that we will find our way to a common solution. We will find our way. Hope remains.

Improv Again

Dec 302019
 

I’m young, on a bare stage with two chairs, a woman named Tina, and somebody in the darkness beyond the spotlight shouts out, “A monkey. A pirate’s treasure map. And a diamond!” And right then, that millisecond, is when Tina and I go to work creating—what others before us have described as “something wonderful right away.” At 25, I had no idea that enrolling in Jo Forsberg’s “Player’s Workshop of The Second City” meant I’d be standing in the shadows of giants. Like the guy Forsberg hired to play piano at a Children’s Theater Workshop, David Mamet. Or a really funny guy from the suburb of Wilmette, Bill Murray, who went on to do OK.

Improvisation for the theater is the only art form that was born and raised in Chicago. The history is deep and rich, traceable back to a people whose names you’d probably not remember: Viola Spolin, Neva Boyd. Julia Lathrop, and on through Paul Sills, Del Close, Charna Halpern, Jo Forsberg and many others. All building a discipline, a training curriculum, quality work, a business and legacy.

Looking back, Improv is the absolute best training I’ve ever had. Which is what makes it so enriching to be able to go back and do it again. With a sparkling cadre of players, a teacher who has the history at Second City, the wisdom of the streets and that rare gift of knowing how make learning come alive, I’ve completed five weekly sessions and will be starting up again soon.

Improv again after all these years makes me feel like the tin man. My creaking and squeaking improv energy put on the back shelf of my mind. The classes leave me drained. That good kind of drained. Stopping that reaching for something wonderful right away. And just letting it come.
Silly stuff that makes people laugh. Letting it come.

Scene!

A Raspberry Pi Christmas

Dec 242019
 

Gray foggy, damp and weirdly warm in Chicago this morning. Christmas coming. The rushing of lesser angels stops cold for a stolen moment and you start missing past times and people you can see, text, email or call up on the phone. Which makes me remember Raspberry Pi.

The idea behind Raspberry Pi is to put the power of computing into everyone’s hands. Literally everyone. In the whole world. This is more like a movement than a foundation and business. Look at their web pages and you’ll see stories and plans like “putting a computer in every school in England.” A proposition which, you figure, would mean that the computers would have to go for around $35 apiece. And they do.

The Raspberry Pi call to action is “teach, learn, make.” There is an old management development cliché that goes “think outside the box.” At Raspberry Pi the more relevant directive would be “Forget the box.”

What I know about Raspberry Pi, and I know relatively little, came from my Dad. And I have no doubt that he knew a lot. With a world class engineering analytical mind recognized at the highest levels of Wall Street, and a heart the size of Lake Michigan, my Dad probably knew as much about the ins and outs of Raspberry Pi than the folks who founded and ran the company. And in the talks with my Dad, just before he passed, he would share his excitement about this computing for everyone idea. Shared it so well that I still get excited thinking about it even though its been years since we talked.

Years since we talked. But it was only last week that I was taking the elevator up to the floor I work on – where a whole lot of engineering goes on. Looking at the advertisement, news and sports scores on the video screen above the elevator buttons. And it flashed for just one tiny golden moment. An ad for Raspberry Pi!

As if my Dad and I were still talking.

And he was saying, “Merry Christmas to All”

When Royko Met Trump

Oct 272019
 

It was in a cold, gray October rain, late on a Saturday afternoon, that Trump slipped into Chicago. The eyes of the city aimed at college football games, cleaning the house, doing errands. Trump’s usual grand entrance to the city, civic trumpets blowing, military guards and closed expressways; all that would come later as he spit out all the dog whistles and hate speak to the loyalists, raked in the money and pounded out tweets. Now it was just Trump and the white hooded figure of a blood red eyed creature he would call “Stephan” who would lean down and whisper in Trump’s ear every few minutes as if giving instructions from very far away.

Their jet having landed in a private airfield north of the city amid gated communities bursting with heavily armed amateur security guards. Car and driver waiting, Trump and Stephan folding themselves into the back seat for the quick ride to the unnamed street corner tavern off of Montrose Ave on the north side of the city.  I’d tell you exactly where but you’d never find it. Like lots of taverns, it was bathed in a  perpetual twilight, even darker now from the rain. Empty except for a man in a gray raincoat sitting against the wall at the end of the bar, face hidden in the shadow of a faded blue Chicago Cubs cap, rhythmically tossing a 16-inch softball just above his head, catching it and tossing it up again. 

In the middle of the bar, hunched over a ginger ale, was my old great Uncle Lester “The Lip” Lapczynski. Wisps of white hair and a beat-up madras sport coat that broke every law of good taste. 

Trump pushes open the bar room door, motions for Stephan to go first—in case danger is lurking—sees Lester at the bar and says “Where’s this Royko guy I been hearing so much about?” To which Lester turns his back on Trump and Stephan—as if turning some distant cheek—and bellows with a force like a righteous wind, “What about the PLUMBERS, putz? The spray from Lester’s protruding lower lip drenching Trump’s face and beading up on his hairspray.

Trump looks at Stephan, who shrugs his shoulders as Trump turns back to Lester who screams it even louder and wetter this time. “The PLUMBERS numb nuts!  The PLUMBERS!”

“You are just like Stinky McGoohan from the old neighborhood!” Lester sprays. “Fact is you could take lessons from Stinky. You KNOW there is a Stinky in EVERY neighborhood.”

“I’m the President of the United States. Didn’t you see it on TV? I had more people at my inauguration than ANY President ever! And I won it fair and square. And what does this have to do with plumbers? I came here to see some hot shot named Royko. They say that if he was still writing, I’d be nothing more than American histories’ big “Ooops!” And so, I make this trip to Chicago with all your crime and everything and this Royko guy doesn’t even show up! What’s the matter,” Trump flashes an evil grin, “this Royko guy come down with a bad case of bone spurs?”  

Stephan clears his throat, motions Trump over with a crooked first finger and whispers in his ear and not skipping a beat, Trump says to Lester, “Bone spurs? I never said bone spurs. You sure that wasn’t the media or the deep state or Hillary talking? And what’s this all about the plumbers?”

‘That deal you made for the plumbing in your eye sore, building on the Chicago River?’

‘I’m a biness man! I make a lot of deals. So what?

Yeah so, I’ve heard Mister Business man,” said Lester, drenching Trump so thoroughly that his hair started to change color “You can explain later how you can loose money on casinos when you’re the house. What I’m talking about is how you somehow managed to make your deals with the plumbers, the unions and even the poor saps who spent millions for the condos go bad. The kind of deals where you can only when if the other guy loses. All those pipes bursting in your building and the water cascading down from floor to floor. Hedge fund guys and all those other biness men checking into the hotel across the street because the plumbing went bad in their 3 million-dollar condos. All because you wanted to stick it to some plumbers.” Lester was on a roll now. “See Junior, and I can call you Junior because you turned out just like the old man. Also, just like Stinky McGoohan. Always making sure the other guy lost first. That’s what really did it for you and Stinky and all the other Stinkys in all our neighborhoods, making sure the other guy lost first. You dressed it up with every kind of spin. But it was really just about making the other guy lose first.

“Yeah,” snarled Trump. “Well if you’re so sure you’re the good guys, if you’re so sure this ain’t a cut throat world, then how come your big hero, your Mister Royko didn’t show up? Hmm? What’s he? Not tough enough? Well I don’t have time for this. C’mon Stephan, lets leave these weak ass losers.” 

And with that, Trump and his white hooded companion turned, opened the tavern door and didn’t see the 16-inch softball come flying out from the end of the bar, zooming like a home run blast to the open skies far above the retreating deal maker and his pal.

They never saw the 16-inch softball ball fly off into the unknown distance. 

They never saw Royko look up from his end of the bar . . .

Nod his head. Tip his Cubs cap. And smile.

Mom at 90

Mar 292019
 

MomRogerArizonaListen. Pete Seeger is singing a song for Mom’s Birthday that’s bigger than all of us. Starts out—“ Come and take a walk with me, thru this green and growing land”

Mom at any age is listening, She hears Seeger sing Phil Ochs’ lyrics,
“Here is a land full of power and glory”
Beauty that words cannot recall”

Mom at this moment resounding with the grace of sunlight
As the calls and texts and shouts of joy from friends, relatives, children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren (Hello Luna and James!) come rushing in from around the world.

And the song sets a course, “Walk through the meadows and the mountains and the sand.
Walk through the valleys and the rivers and the plains
Walk through the sun and walk through the rain.”

Then into memory. From radio station WFMT. Broadcasting from Chicago. Through an eternal News Years Eve. Staying up late with Mom and listening to “The Midnight Special.” Where the lyric goes,

“Yet she’s only as rich as the poorest of her poor
Only as free as the padlocked prison door
Only as strong as our love for this land
Only as tall as we stand”

Mom all those years ago took her kids to all the different churches and temples, so each of us could find our own way.
Each of us finding something larger than ourselves.

From Mom across time
Comes a song of wisdom and a sunbeam of love.

“Here is a song full of power and glory
Beauty that words cannot recall!”

A Song for Mom at 90!

Page 1 of 25 1 2 3 … 24 25